[HN Gopher] Time Travel: Probability and Impossibility
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       Time Travel: Probability and Impossibility
        
       Author : cacher
       Score  : 28 points
       Date   : 2021-11-08 21:36 UTC (1 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (ndpr.nd.edu)
 (TXT) w3m dump (ndpr.nd.edu)
        
       | vanillax wrote:
       | This is like saying we will never fly a plane. Do you really
       | think people in the 1200's could fathom a phone or the internet
       | or access all information that ever has been on a device that
       | fits on your phone? Its incredibly naive to think that time
       | travel isn't possible purely based on "laws of physics".
        
         | hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
         | > Its incredibly naive to think that time travel isn't possible
         | purely based on "laws of physics".
         | 
         | Huh? Would you argue that it's "incredibly naive" to think
         | perpetual motion machines aren't possible purely based on "laws
         | of physics"? Because I think it's incredibly naive to think
         | perpetual motion machines _would_ be possible, precisely
         | because they do violate the laws of physics.
        
         | tjs8rj wrote:
         | "The universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer
         | than we can suppose" - J. B. S. Haldane
         | 
         | I've seen so many documentaries and articles pessimistically
         | concluding we'll never go to another star much less another
         | galaxy based on the speed of light. Once again, too many smart
         | people conclude we've figured it all out as is the perennial
         | tradition.
        
       | jonathankoren wrote:
       | > Nikk Effingham's book is an exploration of all things time
       | travel (where time travel is to be read as backwards time travel,
       | that is, travel to an earlier time).
       | 
       | I'd be interested to know if forward time travel is easier than
       | backwards time travel. Seems to avoid a lot of paradoxes.
        
         | nikhilgk wrote:
         | That's "relatively" easy to do. Get in a space ship that could
         | quickly get to a fraction of c, travel for a short amount of
         | time and then return back to the starting point. You would have
         | traveled to the future from the point of view of some one at
         | the starting point.
        
         | Octplane wrote:
         | It happens to me every night. Gets old pretty fast though...
        
         | spaetzleesser wrote:
         | Forward travel is easy. Go really fast or just hibernate. The
         | physics is easy. It's just an engineering problem.
        
         | modzu wrote:
         | forward time travel is perfectly consistent with the laws of
         | physics and in fact we've done it experimentally. backwards is
         | only possible observationally (ex. building a big telescope we
         | can look at the past) but we cannot effect it
        
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       (page generated 2021-11-08 23:00 UTC)